[BEIJING] Xiaomi’s billionaire founder outlined plans Thursday (May 22) to outfit its top-end devices with advanced homegrown mobile processors, showcasing the company’s ambitions to expand its tech portfolio and compete with American heavyweights.
Lei Jun, who shot to fame with bold plans to unseat Apple in China, gave online viewers a sneak peek at its Xring O1 chip, which he said would power three devices including the Xiaomi Tablet 7 Ultra, another product launched at the same event, livestreamed from Beijing. At 3nm, that processor is aimed at matching Apple and Qualcomm chips.
“We also want to become one of the top chipmakers, with our phones targeting iPhones, can our chips also be compared against those of Apple’s?” he said.
Lei admitted the Xring lags Apple’s own chipset in some respects such as processor speed – but stressed it was an achievement for their fledgling design team.
The entrepreneur, who often personally hosts product launches, is expected to trot out Xiaomi’s first electric sport utility vehicle – the YU7 – at the same event.
Xiaomi is keen to push deeper into tech arenas beyond the affordable smartphones and appliances it’s best known for. Lei announced plans at the Thursday event to invest 200 billion yuan (S$35.8 billion) in research and development over the next five years. It wants to move past a fatal March accident involving one of its signature SU7 sedans that sent orders plunging the following month.
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Xiaomi had raised its 2025 delivery target for electric vehicles to 350,000 units days before that incident, which prompted scrutiny over Xiaomi’s self-driving advertising claims. It stoked concerns that the YU7 would be delayed.
Lei’s most important project is EVs – a US$10 billion attempt to take on Tesla and BYD that the founder has called his final endeavour as an entrepreneur.
The market for SUV was more intense than that for sedans, Lei wrote in a social media post, but he believed that the YU7 has its own unique qualities. It won’t officially hit the market until at least July, with no pricing released at the Thursday event. Xiaomi won’t take pre-orders for the vehicle yet, Lei wrote in a separate post.
The company has also announced a US$7 billion investment to develop and enhance its own mobile processor over the next decade.
Xiaomi’s goals mirror Huawei Technologies’ breakthrough a few years ago, which spooked Washington and raised concerns about Chinese advances in strategic technologies such as AI and chips.
Among the hard-tech initiatives it has touted since the March incident was an in-house large language model dubbed the MiMo.
Executives have reportedly talked about investing in AI in the past, though MiMo is the first real product to emerge. Its foray marks the second big project in as many years for a company best-known for making affordable smartphones and appliances from robot vacuums to rice cookers. BLOOMBERG
